


But There Was Nothing

by TheRealAndian



Category: Momma CQ - Fandom, Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Emotionlessness, Everything is terrible, Gen, I listened to sad music to write this, Sadness, bad times, but not, seriously, the big questions in life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-01
Updated: 2016-09-01
Packaged: 2018-08-12 11:50:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7933525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheRealAndian/pseuds/TheRealAndian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short fanfic spin-off of the Momma CQ comic (http://alainaprana.tumblr.com/tagged/mommacq/chrono).<br/>If you haven't read it, then you'll probably have no idea as to what the heck is happening.</p>
            </blockquote>





	But There Was Nothing

Death had always been a topic that Fresh wasn’t particularly fond of pursuing, but the day had come where it had to be. He stared on in cold silence at the gravesite, watching as the body of his brother was lowered in its casket into the ground, never to see the sun again. His mother had hardly stopped crying for the past week. Ink was wearing full black -- which is entirely unheard of. But Fresh? Fresh felt nothing.

He never felt anything.

Why was he so…Wrong…?

 

He tugged at the stiff collar of his suit; it wasn’t exactly something that he was used to wearing. He usually didn’t mind change, but what the outfit stood for -- what the event stood for...he didn’t want to think about it.

_ Why did he die? It’s just so...pointless. _ He’d always figured Geno would be the first to die, what with his illness and all, but….

He shifted uncomfortably. The thought of dying always brought other thoughts. Like: what would happen once  _ he _ died? People always said that the souls of those who died would move on to some sort of afterlife, but what happens to the ones without souls? Fresh didn’t want to find out. All he wanted to do was live in the moment. After all, “you only live once,” right?

“Shut up,” he whispered to himself. He didn’t want to think about this. Any of it. Error was gone, and that was that. It didn’t matter. People lived. People died. That was just how the world worked.  _ But why? That doesn’t make sense! _

Heh. He was pretty sure  _ he _ didn’t make sense.

 

He went through the motions, doing everything that Aunt Com had told him to do; she had been the only one still strong enough to give any sort of instructions. Fresh didn’t get it. He figured he never would, and he was okay with that. After all, it’s not like he could care that he couldn’t care.

But he knew that he should; his brother was dead. Why didn’t he care? Why  _ couldn’t _ he care? He’d even been the one to  _ find _ Error, a bullet shot through his glitchy soul as the maniac who’d done it ran off. He had been the one to hold Error as he lay dying, begging, pleading for any sort of reaction from his brother--for help. But Fresh hadn’t cared; he’d just thought it was some kind of prank. Even once Error was officially pronounced dead, Fresh didn’t care. He didn’t even care about justice for his brother’s murder.

He never cared about anything.

Except dying.

 

Aunt Com drove them all home after the funeral. Fresh simply walked to his room, smiling at the thought of beating another gym in his Pokémon game. Then he remembered that he shouldn’t be smiling. He knew that Geno and his mother understood that he didn’t feel, but that didn’t mean that he was going to let himself hurt them more by acting more insensitive. He was already insensitive enough. At least, that’s what Error had always told him.

He would let them mourn for now. For now, he would try to lay low, play his games, and give his remaining family some space.

But only for now.

He wanted to show Error his new Pokémon team.

…

Oh wait….

 

* * *

 

Days passed. Weeks. Fresh just sat in his room away from his family, letting them do their thing while he did his. If he were capable of emotion, then he’d probably feel lonely, but he was fine. He just sat and played, talking to Freshby, his Furby, from time to time, just to pass it.

He never got bored. He just was.

Why didn’t this happen all the time?

 

A slam of his door drew him out of his thoughts.

“Error?” he asked, not looking up from his game. “What’sa problemo dis time?” Silence. Fresh continued as he had been for a moment, then stopped, realizing his mistake. Looking up, he saw his mother, instead, hot tears streaking down her face. “Ma? What’s wi’dat all up super unrad look on yo face?”

“Car. Now,” she ordered.

Fresh groaned, he’d been just about to beat his game for the fourteenth time. “Dat don’t all up answer da question, Ma,” he responded.

She...glared at him. His whole life and she had never glared at him. This was new. “It’s Geno. The doctors are saying he might not make it, now come on.”

“Da docs’re always sayin’ dat! Why do I gotta”--she grabbed him by the hood and literally drug him with her--”Whoa, Ma! Chill!”

“I will not ‘chill.’ Now come on. Your brother is dying.”

He huffed in mild annoyance as he allowed himself to be drug away, clutching his Gameboy and Freshby; he really wanted to beat the game. But hey, it wasn’t so bad to talk to someone again, even if that someone was interrupting him and forcing him to go somewhere that he didn’t want to go. They all knew Geno was going to die someday. The sooner the better. At least then he could go back to playing Pokémon.

Admittedly, it would be pretty quiet without Error and Geno, and their mother could only handle so much. Thankfully, Fresh was a pretty manageable kid; he didn’t even have to eat, because when you feel nothing in general, why bother. Pain, hunger, thirst, exhaustion; none of that meant anything to Fresh. Sure, he didn't mind eating and drinking, but he didn't have any sense of taste, either.

It was a very empty life.

Not that he cared.

 

Geno passed only a few hours later. People, mostly his old nurses and doctors, told Fresh that Geno was in a better place now, alongside Error. They asked him many times if he was alright, giving what encouraging words they could muster before succumbing back to what Fresh was told was a feeling of loss and great sadness.

But Fresh felt nothing.

 

* * *

 

 

Years passed. Fresh lived what he considered a good life, just simply existing. He felt no reason or purpose, nor a drive to find one, but he continued regardless, doing his best to understand, or at least find some sort of niche to occupy. He became an actor, just to see what it was like. After all, he was already so good at pretending to have emotions that it was already natural. But still, there was nothing, so he moved on. He became a lawyer. A good one, at that; he jailed the man that had murdered Error, but it didn’t seem to matter. Error was dead and gone, and had been for a long time; imprisoning the criminal meant nothing, so Fresh moved on. He tried to be a scientist, studying what had killed Geno, and even finding the cure. But for him, it meant nothing. Geno was already dead, so there was no point. And Fresh moved on. Again and again. Career after career. 

And still, there was nothing.

So he simply existed, without any sort of purpose.

 

He rarely saw his mother, preferring to travel the world and find what it had to offer him. Even Ink, who had tried his hardest to understand and help Fresh, had grown distant over the years, finding his point in life; to create. To make what no one but he himself could.

But one night, he returned to the town of his childhood to say one last goodbye. His mother had been killed in a car wreck just days prior. Comyet had begged him to come back, as there were very few people who actually had a connection to her, but many who would attend the funeral. “She was your mother,” she had told him. “You should at least come back to pay your respects.”

And so he did.

 

There were many people at the funeral, but only a few had known that there was still one remaining child of the renowned artist that they had only known as the Crayon Queen. Even fewer had known his name.

But that didn’t really bother him.

Only the thought of death that had unnerved him as a child did.

 

“Look,” he began during the short speech that Comyet had also talked him into, “my Ma was basically da best. An’ judgin’ from how other peeps act ‘round me, I’d say she had a pr’y rough time, but she never really got super down, an’ when she did, she still stayed pr’y strong. I may not’ve been her all up bestest kiddo,--heck, I  _ know _ I wasn’t--but she still cared ‘bout me, even though I know she’d probs’a rather’d the others lived this long.” He gauged the crowd’s reaction at this. There were mixed responses, but it seemed that most people were still trying to figure out what he’d just said. “Heh. Kinda wish I understood that, yo,” he mused mostly to himself. “But yeah, she cared ‘bout lotsa peeps. She super cared ‘bout e’ryone who read her stories ‘n stuff.

“Can’t really say I’ll miss her, seein’ as I couldn’t care ‘bout her in the first place”--people around the gravesite looked shocked--”but she was pr’y rad, my Momma CQ. I guess you dudes’ll hafta all up miss her for me, but hey, ‘YOLO’ right?” He cracked a grin. People looked absolutely mortified.

Fresh ignored their response and wheelied off the platform, letting Comyet have the stand again. She looked absolutely livid. People avoided him for the rest of the funeral. Afterwards, she yelled at him for being insensitive.

But still, Fresh felt nothing.

 

* * *

  
  


It was the end, and he knew it. He guessed he should have figured it out sooner.

His empty, soulless eyes stared up at the ceiling in one of the rare times that he wasn’t wearing his iconic YOLO glasses. He could not move.

Fresh laid alone on his bed--the bed of his childhood--unable to regain full consciousness. In all honesty, though, he wasn’t entirely certain as to what was wrong with him. He only knew that, unless by some miracle someone came into his room, he was going to die.

He thought about his life; something that he didn’t do often. He decided that he’d lived a decent enough life. He’d done everything that he’d been told that he should do, both by his mother and Comyet, while putting his own twist on it. He’d tried to be himself while also being the person that others needed him to be. He knew that no one quite took him seriously, but he didn’t care.

His mind wandered elsewhere, filling the void of time between life and death. Could his family see him in the fabled afterlife? Were they pleased or disgusted? Would he see them again? What if there really was something in store for him once he died? Then again, what if there was absolutely nothing, and he simply ceased to exist? What if nothing he had ever done would ever matter? What if, what if?

The uncomfortable nervousness was back.

 

He wasn’t exactly afraid to die, but the thought of diving into the unknown was somewhat nerve-wracking. After all, he hadn’t discovered everything that the world had to offer yet. Emotion still eluded him. He knew that people felt passion and love, guilt and anger, peace and harmony, along with a multitude of other emotions. He knew that people naturally were afraid of dying.

But he never experienced any of it.

And he wasn’t even capable of caring.

 

So he laid there, his mind slowly ebbing away as took the last few breaths of his meaningless life.

But still, there was nothing.

And then there was nothing.

And there was nothing.

 

* * *

 

Ink found Fresh a few days later, having gone to check up on him and make sure he was alright. He was immediately rushed to the hospital, but has pronounced dead a mere hour later.

Cause of death?

Starvation.

**Author's Note:**

> People that write fanfics for this series seem to generally fall into certain catergories: Geno dies and Fresh gains emotions, Geno survives and Fresh gains emotions, fluff, or suicide and angst. For some reason, Fresh seems to almost always get emotions at some point.  
> Why?  
> Why not write him as the emotionless freak he is?  
> Well, for one, it's definitely harder, so I guess I can kind of understand, but it feels disappointing while rewarding at the same time. Disappointing because he never understands, but rewarding because it's just not something people do often in general.  
> Also, why is Geno always the first to die?
> 
> All this aside, I hope you enjoyed. This was good practice for me...especially since I have plans for writing emotionless characters in the future...  
> >;)
> 
>  
> 
> (Btw, Fresh, that was a dumb way to die. Just because you don't get hungry doesn't mean that you shouldn't eat, brah.)


End file.
